Chapter 57: Garden Menace
--Chapter 57--
Title>> Garden Menace
The second Root Rat launched at Xavier from his right. Xavier shifted his weight in quick response. The gardening knife slipped beneath the creature’s body just as it crossed his path.
Slash!
The Root Rat spun through the air and struck the soil, skidding several meters away.
It completely stopped moving the moment it touched the ground.
The remaining creatures scattered in that interval. But Xavier tracked their movements carefully. None of them were coming toward him anymore. They were all trying to get away.
The first two had attacked because he was in their way. Now that they knew what he was capable of, the others were trying to get back underground.
With his left hand extended forward, mana gathered around his fingers, accumulating until the Chains of the Bounded erupted from the ground.
The metal chain shot across the garden and wrapped around the root beside the nearest burrow. Another plunged into the opening itself, its length vanishing beneath the soil.
One Root Rat reached the entrance. But it stopped so abruptly that dirt scattered beneath its feet.
The creature turned, but there was nowhere else to go. The chain snapped tight on the entrance.
The rat squealed and tried to force its way through the gap anyway. But its attempts were futile. The links crushed it inwardly.
Xavier didn’t watch its demise for long. He instead moved toward another entrance.
A Root Rat emerged from beneath a plant and immediately darted toward the next opening.
Xavier blurred and crossed its path. The rat squealed and changed direction immediately.
But it was all useless. Xavier followed it effortlessly, bringing the knife down on its head, pinning its skull to the ground.
Another chain shot past Xavier’s shoulder and sealed the burrow behind it.
Xavier kept going, turning the garden into a chess board. Every time a rat tried to reach an exit, a chain was already waiting.
Even when one managed to slip past him and disappeared beneath a root, Xavier inspected the hole and then looked at the other entrances.
He did not need to chase the creatures. Only aim to close the paths they took.
One after another, they spread through the garden, sealing the openings Xavier had found.
In little less than a minute, Xavier had made sure any rat above ground was lying dead in a puddle of its blood.
The remaining Root Rats were now trapped beneath the soil.
The garden fell quiet at this point as he looked around at the roots.
Sir Buttallo had been sealing burrows for days now, and until this moment, it hadn’t mattered. This was because the burrows weren’t the problem.
Recalling the fairy’s words clearly.
"If only I could find that nest."
His gaze shifted around the area. If the rats were appearing from different directions and burrows, then the possibility of a central area like a nest was by no means a long shot.
Xavier’s fingers tightened around the gardening knife. He needed to find the source.
But how?
Xavier looked at the nearest sealed burrow. The Root Rats were still moving beneath the ground.
He couldn’t see them, but the occasional shift of soil gave away their position. They were moving through the tunnels now, searching for another way out.
Xavier opened his map when he got a quick idea. If the Wanderer’s Compass followed and trailed the path of Wanderers, what was to say it couldn’t follow the Root Rats now?
Xavier watched the map closely, and after a second or two, the needle on the Wanderer’s Compass interface shifted south.
Using the map, Xavier followed the direction across it. The route didn’t stop at the garden.
Instead, it extended outside and beneath the southern edge of the Green Solace.
Xavier’s expression changed slightly as he looked down at the soil again.
The disturbed ground made more sense now. The burrows weren’t their home. They were exits.
The actual path was underneath the garden.
Xavier closed the map quickly and placed one hand against the nearest root.
Mana travelled through the Chains of the Bounded, and the chain began to move beneath the soil.
With his guidance, Xavier directed it through the tunnel, the chain following the route beneath the surface from one opening to another and one turn to another.
The chain continued farther than the burrow network he had already mapped, even as Xavier walked behind it on the surface.
At a particular spot, the tunnel widened and the chain moved into something larger.
This made Xavier stop for the moment. The movement beneath the ground had changed.
Small bodies shifted against one another beneath the earth, claws scraping over the chain as more of them tried to move through the darkness.
Opening the map, Xavier confirmed the indicated direction, and it was exactly as the Wanderer’s Compass indicated.
He had found the nest.
***
With the position of the nest located, Xavier pulled the chain tighter. Plunging another one alongside the first, he caused the ground to crack. Several thick roots tore apart as the Chains of the Bounded forced their way through the earth, dragging soil and tangled vegetation aside.
This revealed a hollow beneath the garden. And the Root Rats were everywhere.
Small bodies rushed through the darkness in every direction, climbing over one another as the sudden opening exposed their nest.
Xavier didn’t give them time to scatter. Instead, the chains moved first. They spread through the hollow and sealed the passages branching away from it.
One after another, the routes disappeared completely, leaving the rats in the open and in his mercy.
Without thinking too much about it, Xavier stepped into the hollow.
The space was larger than he expected. Roots formed the ceiling and walls, creating a natural chamber beneath the Green Solace.
Bits of chewed roots, leaves, and scraps of whatever the creatures had dragged underground were scattered across the floor.
Within the space, Xavier’s eyes moved across the chamber. There were no clever tactics required here.
The Root Rats had already lost their escape routes. All that was left was a massacre.
And a massacre it was.
Chains pierced through the soil and caught one trying to crawl beneath a root.
Xavier reached another before it could turn around.
Slash!
The gardening knife cut through it. One after another, they fell.
The remaining creatures scattered until there was nowhere left to scatter to.
After several minutes, Xavier finished the last one near the back of the chamber. Its squeal was the last sound before silence returned.
Xavier stood among the remains and looked around the nest.
The problem that had been eating through Sir Buttallo’s garden for two weeks was gone.
He dismissed the remaining Chains of the Bounded, both the underground and those guarding the garden’s entrances. As
the system notification appeared at the same time.
[Side Quest: Garden Menace]
[Status: Complete]
[+20 Reputation, +1 Agility | Experience Acquired.]
[Items acquired; Root Rat Teeth ×6, Root Rat Hide ×3]
Xavier glanced over them. Nothing particularly valuable but he stores them into the inventory anyways.
He turned toward the passage leading back to the Green Solace.
Xavier climbed out of the hollow and began making his way back.
While he walked forward, someone emerged from the near-by greenery, their body flickering in and out as they watched the man disappear.
--End of Chapter--